It’s been a while since I’ve blogged as we’ve been heads down on getting a product to market but I wanted to offer a quick update.

First of all, we’ve got a brand new name. We’ll be launching next year as EduFire.com. This name was inspired by the Yeats quote “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” That quote does a great job of conveying our feeling about education. Education/learning isn’t about just memorizing facts and figures. Rather it’s about inspiring new ways of thinking and getting people to spread their wisdom with others and realize their genius. To the extent that we can help to enable that we’ve done our job.

As for an update, I was gonna write one but this interview we did recently with Brian Norgard (founder of Newroo which was acquired by Fox Interactive last year and eventually became MySpace News) sums it up pretty well. Check it out:

Startup Chat #2: EduFire

We’re launching privately to a select group of language tutors and students this month. If you’re interested in being a part of our beta drop me a line at jon @ edurev dot com.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has a special deal over the next two weeks. It’s simple:

Buy an OLPC laptop for a child in the developing world, and you get to buy one for yourself. It costs $400 total, but $200 of that is a charitable donation for the laptop you donate.

You can buy them at LaptopGiving.org, but only for the next 10 days. After that, no laptop for you!

Bill Clementson has a great description of the OLPC laptop. For me, I’m excited about it because it runs Linux, weighs less than four pounds, has a battery life greater than 10 hours, and I’m sure will be hackable to high heaven. I’m excited about the possibility of developing on such a portable, rugged machine.

So if you’re a geek, or want to buy a cheap laptop for your child while buying one for a kid in the third world, head on over to LaptopGiving.orgin the next 10 days and do some good.